This family has faced a long, but steady, road to recovery.

When Tragedy Strikes

When Tragedy Strikes

With less than a half-mile left of the Boston Marathon, Carol Downing, 58, was giddy with excitement. For a woman who hadn't taken up running until the age of 40, she was proud to be in the "Super Bowl" of all road races. "I was picking up speed, the adrenaline was pumping and the crowd was getting thicker," says Carol, a retired massage therapist. "I couldn't wait to see my family at the finish line."

All of a sudden, "everything just stopped. I hit a wall of runners. Then I heard sirens," says Carol. She didn't hear the bombs go off, but one of them had exploded less than 15 feet from her daughters, Erika Brannock, 30, and Nicole Gross, 32, and Nicole's husband, Michael, 33.

"I remember big flashes of orange and yellow, then I blacked out," says Erika. "When I came to, I smelled burnt metal. I thought, I need to get up, then realized that I couldn't. I closed my eyes and had a conversation with God. I told Him, 'I'm not ready to die.'"

Nicole, who was blown about 10 feet from where she had been standing, looked down at her bloody legs and screamed for help. Michael had suffered minor injuries and was frantically searching for his wife and sister-in-law. "It was like a war scene. I was looking at people through the smoke, but I couldn't see their faces. My brain wasn't functioning at full speed yet," he says.

About 30 minutes after the blast, Michael texted Carol, asking if she was OK and adding: "We were in the bomb. I can't find Nicole and Erika." Carol felt helpless. "Not only did I not know where they were, but I had no idea where I was or how to get around. My husband, Skip — the girls' stepdad — was in Arizona at the time dealing with a family emergency."

Nicole was in newspapers around the world after the marathon, like the New York Daily News (inset).

Too Much to Handle

Too Much to Handle

Before Carol could figure out what to do next, she got another text from Michael. He'd received a call from a surgeon, who said that Nicole had been taken to Brigham and Women's Hospital. The runner standing next to Carol — who helped her read the text messages because she didn't have her glasses — walked her to the nearest subway stop.

On the way, they met a couple who offered to drive Carol to the hospital. When she arrived, she learned that Nicole had suffered a fractured left tibia and fibula, a nearly severed right Achilles tendon, a 50% perforation in her right eardrum and shrapnel in both legs. "I didn't even cry. It was surreal and too much to absorb. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience."